5 Gender Stereotypes That Used To Be the Exact Opposite

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The hardest stereotypes to break are the ones that are so old as to go all the way back to hunter-gatherer days. After all, how can you argue with biology? Women carry the babies, men have the upper body strength to tackle gazelles. Nobody made that up out of thin air.

But if society has taught us one thing, it's that it becomes way too easy to attach amendments to that bill, claiming that all sexual and gender stereotypes date back to the early days of human evolution. Of course, in reality ...For most families, finding out the gender of their baby early on is crucial, since everyone needs to know what color of clothes and toys to get them — pink or blue? Almost immediately after being born, an infant is outfitted with his or her uniform (a blue T-shirt or pink headband, respectively) so there can be no confusion. You don't want your baby to turn out gay, do you? If it's a girl, don't forget to paint the room pink and get pink curtains. Pink is an inherently girly color that makes us think of flowers and sweet smells and being delicate, while blue is, uh, football, Chevy trucks ... Smurfs ... that topless lizard chick from Avatar ...

But at One Time ...

If it's starting to seem pretty arbitrary, that's because it totally is. Up until the start of World War I, people didn't care what color their kids' diapers were, because it was the freaking 19th century. What color the fabric is under the baby poop is the last thing on your mind when you have to deal with insanely high infant mortality rates, the Civil War, cholera and roving packs of baby-eating wolves (look, the old days were hard, OK?) . Luckily, all our gender issues were heartily resolved by the 1910s, when it was decided that we'd assign colors to each "team": blue was for girls and pink was for boys. No, that's not a typo: A 1918 editorial from Earnshaw's Infants' Department stated that pink was "a more decided and stronger color ... more suitable for the boy; while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl." It makes sense: Pink is the color of a nice, raw, manly steak, or the blood of your enemies splattered on a white uniform. But things had started to switch by 1927, and there was disagreement as to which gender should get which color — Time magazine even printed a chart showing which stores were advocating each. It wasn't until 1940 that the colors switched and advertisers decided to just go with pink for girls.

This goes beyond colors, too, by the way. For example, take a look at this baby:Cute, right? Let's see what she looks like all grown up:Yeah, that's FDR in the dress. In those days, it was common to throw every kid in a dress, because who cares? So it turns out the real danger of dressing androgynously is the possibility of your kid growing up to get elected president of the U.S. four times in a row.